I've never tried fishing for steelies in the surf, but I've done plenty of surf fishing for salt-water species (perch, rockfish, ling, greenling, etc.).
I did watch one native steelhead get landed in the surf. It was right at the mouth of the Alsea. The party that landed the fish killed it and started eating on it right there, but when I got to the beach, they decided that they were too good to share the beach with me and left, leaving a beautiful native hen laying there on the beach with her belly open and still twitching.
I would have turned them in, but OSP would have a hard time
handcuffing that bald eagle. ![Big grin :D :D](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png)
Surf fishing for steelies sounds like a good time, though. If you want some company, I'd be game!